The Bath Profile
is an ISO Internationally Registered Profile (IRP) of the
Z39.50
Information Retrieval Protocol, intended as a basis for effective
interoperability between library and cross-domain applications. It
is widely implemented, and generally seen as the best
basis for interoperability between independently built
bibliographic Z39.50 clients and servers.

SRW (Search/Retrieve Web Service)
is a new HTTP-based information retrieval protocol providing broadly
the same facilities as Z39.50, but by means of very different
technology.

CQL (Common Query Language)
is a new query language, human-readable and writable but rigorous
enough to be used as the protocol-level search syntax for SRW.

In order to promote interoperability between bibliographic clients
and servers using SRW, it is necessary to provide specifications for
expressing the Bath Profile's queries and returning bibliographic
records. This is widely seen as a prerequisite for the widespread
adoption of SRW in the library community.

This document describes version 2.0 of the Bath Profile for SRW,
since it corresponds to version 2.0 of the Bath Profile for Z39.50.
Its unique identifier is the URI
http://zing.z3950.org/srw/bath/2.0/

The list of indexes in the Bath Context Set does not include indexes
corresponding to the Bath access points
Author,
Title,
Subject,
Any,
Standard Identifier,
Date of Publication,
Format/Type of Material
and
Language.
This is because Bath queries in CQL use existing indexes
defined in the
CQL,
Record Metadata (Rec)
and
Dublin Core (DC)
context sets for these concepts, just as they use the
relations supplied by other sets for
=,
<,
<=,
>=,
>,
exact
and
within.
So Bath queries will in general use a mixture of indexes from
the CQL, DC and Bath context sets.

Although the Bath profile lists some 96 separate searches that may
be supported at various functional levels, only 21 different access
points are used, together with various combinations of relation,
wildcarding, anchoring, etc. The following table shows which CQL
indexes are used for each of them, and which context sets they are
drawn from.

Access Point

Context Set

Index

Author, including Creator

DC

creator

Title

DC

title

Subject

DC

subject

Any

CQL

anywhere

Standard Identifier

DC

identifier

Date of Publication, including Date of Publication Range

DC

date

Key Title

Bath

keyTitle

Format/Type of Material

DC

format

Language

DC

language

Possessing Institution

Bath

possessingInstitution

Name

Bath

name

Personal Name

Bath

personalName

Corporate Name

Bath

corporateName

Conference Name

Bath

conferenceName

Uniform Title

Bath

uniformTitle

ISSN

Bath

issn

Remote System Record Number

Rec

id

Geographic Name

Bath

geographicName

Notes

Bath

notes

Topical Subject

Bath

topicalSubject

Genre/form Subject

Bath

genreForm

Note.
Although the Bath profile includes separate sections on Author and
Creator searches - for example,
5.A.0.1. Author Search - Keyword
and
5.C.0.1. Creator Search - Keyword
- there is no operational difference between these, as it defines
both to use the same set of BIB-1 attributes (1=1003, 2=3, 3=3, 4=2,
5=100, 6=1).
In the same way, Date of Publication Range in the Bath Profile uses
the same access point as Date of Publication, but with a different
relation (within).

The relation, wildcarding and anchoring to be used for each of the
searches listed in the Bath Profile are determined by consulting
the title of the section describing the search. Most searches have
titles in which the access-point is followed by a dash and then a
descriptive clause such as ``keyword'', ``exact match'' or ``first
words in field''.

The remaining searches are those with no descriptive part of
their name
(for example,
5.A.1.14. Standard Identifier Search).
These use the = relation with no wildcard or
anchoring.

Note.
The name of the search described by
section 5.A.2.7
of the Bath Profile (Format/Type of Material Search - Phrase)
appears to be a mistake, since it uses the same relation etc. as the
``First Words in Field'' searches. The section should probably be
titled ``Format/Type of Material Search - First Words in Field''.

The final wrinkle is that Date of Publication searches (and only
these) may be formulated using the
<,
<=,
>=,
>
and
within
relations as well as
=.